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Archive for the ‘media bias’ Category

– by Josh Painter
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I have asked a number of writers for several media outlets, including major “conservative” sites, if they even bothered to contact Rice and ask him if McGinness’ allegation is true, and if they did not ask him, why not? Not a single one among them would answer the question. Not a one. Now Rob Port addresses the same question at The Say Anything Blog:

Author Joe McGinnis, whose hit-piece on Sarah Palin called The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin has been causing a stir of late, talked with Newsweek about his book and claims that it is (as the New York Times put it, “caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.”

McGinnis was asked about the most salacious claim in the book, that a young Sarah Palin had sex with basketball star Glen Rice, and it’s revealed that McGinnis apparently never asked Rice directly if he and Palin had a romantic relationship. Rather, he just extrapolated that conclusion from Rice’s ambiguous answer to an indirect question.

I find it to be nothing short of staggering that conservatives have been railing against the “liberal media” for years now, and it turns out that the “conservative media” appears to be no more interested in getting the truth (or at least doing basic, fair reporting) than their counterparts on the left. At least there are a few bloggers willing to go where “journalists” don’t dare to tread.

– by Josh Painter
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In a Friday opinion piece for The Daily Caller, Jedediah Bila takes the media to task for its endless, inconsequential speculation about Sarah Palin, while ignoring that which is substantial about the first woman and youngest person to serve as Alaska’s governor:

Whether she makes a run for the presidency or not — and I personally believe that she will — let’s take a look at some things the media and the D.C./Manhattan elite haven’t quite gotten around to mentioning.

1. As governor in 2007, Palin was responsible for the largest veto totals in state history, while investing $1 billion in forward-funding education and fulfilling public safety and infrastructure necessities.

2. Palin invested $5 billion in state savings during a time of economic surplus.

3. Palin reduced spending by 9.5% from 2007 to 2010 and slashed earmark requests by over 80% during her time as governor.

4. Under Palin, Alaska’s total liabilities were reduced by 34.6% overall.

[…]

7. Palin tossed out the corruption-ridden, structurally-flawed Petroleum Profits Tax of the Murkowski administration and put forth ACES (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share), which incentivized development while seeing to it that Alaskans — resource owners as per the Alaska Constitution — would receive “A CLEAR and EQUITABLE SHARE (ACES) of the value of their commonly-owned oil and gas.” The result? Alaska was left with a $12 billion surplus. Also, as reported at Big Government, “The number of oil companies filing with the Alaska Department of Revenue has doubled, indicating that competition has indeed increased. Alaska has the second most business friendly tax set-up — up two spots since the passage of ACES. Additionally, a report from Governor Parnell’s Department of Revenue indicated that 2009 yielded a record high in oil jobs.”

– by Josh Painter
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For those who have been paying attention, there’s been a radical change in the way the media treats Michele Bachmann. It was not so long ago that the Congresswoman was being painted with the same brush and texture they applied to Sarah Palin. Both Republican women were characterized as “stupid,” “ignorant,” “crazy” and “right wing extremists.”

But since the Minnesotan announced the formation of an exploratory committee around the end of March, the media narrative about her has morphed from “as horrible as Palin” into “not quite as terrible as Palin” and finally into “very much preferable to Palin.” No, this is not just prejudice as a Palin supporter speaking, and it’s not simply a conspiracy theory.

Don’t believe us? A search engine provides all the evidence required for a demonstration of what we’re talking about. Chris Matthews is pretty high up on the mailing list to receive DNC talking points, so we’ll see how the meme has morphed from the point of view he expresses as the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball.”

Matthews used the terms “zombie-like” and “Moonie-like” to describe Bachmann on November 24, 2010 and implied that she was some sort of “Manchurian Candidate”:

“Look at her eye contact. I asked her when we had her on election night if she’s under hypnosis. She doesn’t answer the question. She looks straight ahead in that kind of zombie-like manner, like she’s waiting for somebody to flash a card, like in ‘Manchurian Candidate.’ I mean, I don’t know what her state is.”

Now here’s Matthews January 19, 2011 calling Bachmann a “screamer” and “pretty close to a nut case”:

“This kind of talk from Michele Bachmann. I don’t know why she’s allowed to be an extremist, and everybody is coaxing on the Right, Republicans saying the President should move to the center and be reasonable and moderate, where she’s allowed to be out there as a screamer, and in many cases pretty close to a nut case.”

By April 5, 2011, however, “Tweety” Matthews is chirping a slightly softer tune. He says that Bachmann is preparing seriously for a presidential campaign, calls her “exciting” and “attractive,” mentions her politically appealing family life, and even predicts she will be a force to be reckoned with in Iowa. But that’s not the half of it. Very strangely, Matthews made the claim that “we created her here,” meaning on his MSNBC show, and when guest Jonathan Alter attacks Bachmann, Matthew rises to her defense:

“Michelle Bachmann, female candidate, may run with all of the boring guys if Sarah Palin doesn’t get in… One exciting, hard right, attractive candidate against four boring guys. I think she’s got a good shot at winning that Iowa caucus. Just because she’s a really interesting entry right now.”

[…]

What about her personal story? Forget the ideology for a minute. She’s had a big family, five kids she’s raised, something like fifteen foster kids she’s taken in.”

By June 14, 2011, Matthews had come 180 degrees on Bachmann. Gone are the slurs, replaced with such praise as “poised, informed and serious.” Suddenly, “a star” is born. Her performance in Monday night’s GOP debate gets rated as “great” by Matthews, who asks, “Could she be the candidate that Sarah Palin was supposed to be?” NewsBuster Scott Whitlock, noticing the sea change in Matthews’ treatment of Bachmann, questions the talk show host’s motives, asking, “What is Chris Matthews up to?”

“Maybe the biggest story from last night was not Romney’s cool or Pawlenty’s retreat, but the emergence of a star, Michele Bachmann. She was, of course, created here. She came off as poised, informed, that’s right, Gene, poised, informed and serious. Could she be the candidate that Sarah Palin was supposed to be?”

[…]

“First of all, what did you think of her performance last night? Because we all thought she was great.”

[…]

“And she is what she is. I’ve always given her credit for not being, for example, a birther, who plays on cheap shots.”

In answer to Scott’s question, what Matthews is up to, we believe, is playing the left’s latest strategy, whether it comes down from high as a DNC talking point or was “brainstormed” on some newer, more secure revision of JournoList, to play Michele Bachmann against Sarah Palin. The goal is to push Bachmann so hard as to discourage Sarah Palin from getting in the presidential race, and failing that, to make sure that Bachmann knocks her out. Matthews is not acting alone. All of MSNBC is playing, and across the media, in fact, we are seeing a kinder, gentler approach to Rep. Bachmann.

We’re not the only ones having such thoughts. Tom Tillotson of Florida Political Press saw this coming over ten days ago, before the media’s transition was complete:

Naturally, being of the tea party mindset and having absolutely no trust in the media, my conspiratorial juices, which I like to refer to as skeptical intrigue, begin to flow.
[…]

As for Palin, pundits on the right are fond of saying that the media will always let you know who they’re most afraid of by looking at who they go at the hardest. And there can be no doubt that Sarah Palin is that person. Just look at the frothing at the mouth taking place this week over her bus tour.

Yet, compare that to the cordial treatment that Michele Bachmann receives and it just doesn’t make sense. Unless the media has an agenda. An agenda aimed at the one they fear the most.

Then it hits me like a bolt of lightening!

I submit that the media is capitalizing on Michele Bachmann’s prominence in an attempt to supplant Sarah Palin as the queen of conservatism. By indirectly promoting Bachmann, which they do by not going at her with both guns blazing, the goal is to knock Palin from her perch and replace her with someone they do not lie awake at night exasperating over.

[…]

Within the tea party movement, as admired as she is, Bachmann just doesn’t quite have the star power of Sarah Palin. Sure, she’s a prolific fundraiser and her negatives are nowhere near Palin’s, but at the end of the day, unless something significant happens, she’s going to have her hands full trying to unseat Barack Obama.

And the media knows this, hence their willingness to play her against Sarah Palin.

Can you see what’s going on here? We certainly hope Sarah Palin sees it. Given her sharp political instincts, we are of the opinion that she may well be aware of it. All the more reason, we submit, for her to get into the race and get in soon. Please governor, don’t let them get away with this. You have proven them wrong and thwarted their plans many times in your political career. You know what is at stake here. One of the many reasons why we support you and believe in you so earnestly is that you are a fighter. If you get in this fight, you know there are millions of us who will be in your corner, and unlike a few untrustworthy souls, we will not abandon you. You can kick their butts. And they’re just asking for it.

– by Josh Painter
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Following claims by the UK’s very left wing paper, The Guardian, that Marget Thatcher had “snubbed” Sarah Palin, Nile Gardiner decided to investigate the matter personally. Few are better qualified for such an inquiry, because Gardiner served the former British Prime Minister as a foreign policy researcher and advisor. He assisted her as she wrote Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, and in 2006, Gardiner was appointed director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a position he still holds:

It all began with a blog post in The Guardian claiming the former prime minister had refused to meet with Mrs. Palin on her upcoming visit to London, on the grounds that she was “unworthy of an audience”, and quoting an anonymous “ally” of Lady Thatcher.

[…]

I have spoken to Lady Thatcher’s Private Office regarding the story, and they confirm that the attack on Sarah Palin definitely did not come from her office, and in no way reflects her views. As a former aide to Margaret Thatcher myself, I can attest that this kind of thinking is entirely alien to her, and that such remarks would never be made by her office. She has always warmly welcomed like-minded figures in the United States, and has in the past met with numerous US presidential candidates and political dignitaries when they have visited London. But at the age of 85 she is now able to receive very few visitors at all.

As we reported here Saturday, Christopher Collins of the The Thatcher Foundation has also debunked the Guardian’s lies. There was never any snub of Sarah Palin by Lady Thatcher’s office, as Nile Gardiner confirms. But there was a vile and vain smear attempt made on Sarah Palin by the British left, who have proven that they are at least as nasty and mendacious as their American comrades.

– by Josh Painter
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American Thinker Editor Thomas Lifson theorizes that the media’s Alaskan email fiasco could backfire on them so badly that it could have the effect of virtually applying a coat of Teflon® to her, thereby enhancing her presidential prospects. The media, by “examining every document for something — anything! — to use as a gotcha” to take down Gov. Palin, says Lifson, is making its extreme hostility toward the former governor and vice presidential candidate transparent to all.

As the nation hurtles toward the 2012 election, inevitably a referendum on Obama’s term in office, with the public deeply disappointed in the change already brought to fruition in the “fundamental transformation” of our country promised by the president, the media once again displays its double standards. More specifically, where Sarah Palin is involved, the public now can see with clarity that the mission of the legacy media is search and destroy.

Many claim that Sarah Palin is “damaged goods,” that her “brand” has been irretrievably tarnished, and that she would be hopeless as a presidential nominee, should she decide to enter the race.

But the very media outlets that mocked her, and convinced the public that she is stupid, are themselves looking stupid. More to the point, the look like bullies. They also look very disappointed that they haven’t been able to come up with much.

[…]

The American public loves underdogs and despises bullies. Polls asking the public about various occupations inevitably find that politicians and media rank near the bottom in terms of credibility and likability. President Clinton and his attack dogs recognized that the impeachment-minded GOP House could be demonized, in effect spray painting him with Teflon® against their attack.

One can at least wonder if something of the same process might be at work with Mrs. Palin. She has demonstrated time and again an ability to confound her haters with unorthodox tactics, turning their fury back against them. The feeding frenzy in Juneau offers her another opportunity to turn the tables on those who seek to destroy her.

It would indeed be sweet irony if the same media which has been trying to destroy Sarah Palin for nearly three years may, by overreaching, find itself largely responsible for undoing the same damage it inflicted upon Gov. Palin. The irony could only be made sweeter if she runs for the White House and wins the race.

Don’t change a thing that you’re doing, lamestreamers. Keep up the bad work.

– by Josh Painter
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Remember when the Associated press assigned eleven of its crack reporters to “fact check” Sarah Palin’s first book Going Rogue? Democrat Party house organ The Washington Post has found a cheaper way to allocate resources in the corrupt media left’s endless pursuit of digging for dirt on the first woman to be the vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party. It is recruiting Palin-hatin’ Post readers to do it for free.

Ryan Kellett, who holds the title of “Interactivity Producer” at WaPo and has his byline under the bold head “Help investigate the Palin e-mails,” makes the pitch:

More than 24,000 e-mail messages sent to and from Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska’s governor will be released Friday. Join The Post in digging through them. We are looking for 100 organized and diligent readers who will work alongside Post reporters to analyze, contextualize, and research the e-mails. Think of it as spending some time in our newsroom.

Our hope is that working together, we can efficiently find interesting information and extract new stories that will lead to further investigation. We don’t know what we’ll find, but we want you to be ready and open for the challenge.

You will communicate with us virtually and work in small teams to make light work of reviewing the e-mail threads. Notice the patterns. Identify recipients and senders. Connect specific e-mails to larger themes and events. We’ll give you a sense of what to look out for, but the hope is that your team can tackle the challenge together in a collaborative way that our journalists alone cannot. And in fact, we are selecting just 100 people because we want to make real use of your talents and trust you to use teamwork to your advantage.

How acute is the epidemic of Palin Derangement Syndrome among the Post partisans? We can practically see Kellett’s words salivating on our computer monitor, so thrilled is he with the prospect of finding juicy tidbits in the governor’s e-mails. We wonder if he also has a thrill running up his leg. Too bad he and his WaPo cohorts could not get as excited about digging into the obscured details of a half-term Senator’s college records and the radical characters he chose to associate with back in the day, and then in the years thereafter. If they had bothered, the republic would likely not have traveled so many miles down the road to ruin.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if some enterprising Paliniste volunteered to go undercover and submitted applications to play in the Post’s pool of Palin plunderers? If you’ve always wanted to be a double agent, or if you would just like to bring a little bit of fairness and balance to WaPo’s witch hunt fishing expedition, just follow the links.

I can believe she was thinking only of her intended audience when she told the Tea Party to “party like it’s 1773.” Of course liberals have no idea when the original Tea Party occurred, and raced to demonstrate their deplorable ignorance of history by attacking her for saying it. She didn’t know they were going to make fools of themselves. She was thinking about the Tea Party enthusiasts she was speaking to, not ignorant lefty bloggers and talking heads.

But this time… this time was on purpose. She knew exactly what she was doing when she said Paul Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells, and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that were going to be secure, and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

She knew that lefty bloggers and media talking heads would walk right into it. She knew they are as ignorant of the Revolution as they were of the Tea Party, and remember nothing about Paul Revere except “one if by land, two if by sea.” She knew damn well they wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to stick their noses in the air and arrogantly inform their audiences that she needs to go back to school and take high-school history over again.

There’s no way I’m letting Palin slide on this…

[…]

Frightened liberals flailing around for ways to attack Palin should give up on writing ridiculous diatribes about how she’s endangering the lives of reporters by refusing to provide the exact route of her “One Nation” tour in advance. It’s manifestly absurd to keep bleating that she has no “substance” when she belts out impromptu policy speeches every time she hops off that bus. Instead, you should be complaining about her cruel genius for making liberals look stupid. Only Anthony Weiner can hold a candle to her at that… and she’s obviously having much more fun doing it.

– by Josh Painter
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Now that the One Nation Tour bus is at rest in the garage before the next leg of Sarah Palin’s great American adventure gets it rolling again, CNN Political reporter Peter Hamby looks back on the week and concludes that Gov. Palin actually treated the media quite nicely while on the tour:

Her strategy is unlikely to change as the patriotism-themed tour makes its way through the Midwest, West and South later this month.

But once reporters tracked her down, Palin was eager to engage. At stop after stop after stop, she answered questions on everything from energy subsidies to the debt ceiling to her favorite brand of designer jeans.

[…]

…she took questions from the media 17 different times over the course of four days.

That’s a remarkable number for any national political figure, particularly for one locked into an exclusive television contract that normally precludes her from talking to other media outlets.

[…]

But Palin seemed at ease at most events, lingering outside her bus or SUV to answer every possible question despite Piper’s best efforts to drag her away and helpless shouts of “Last question!” from her aides.

During a stop at a café in central Pennsylvania, even her normally reticent husband Todd opened up to reporters about his family’s readiness for a potential campaign.

At a clambake in the coastal New Hampshire town of Seabrook on Wednesday, Palin cheerfully chatted at length with a pack of reporters from national outlets like CNN, NBC, CBS, The Washington Post, Time and Bloomberg.

– by Josh Painter
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The DC’s Matt Lewis observes that Gov. Palin has some members of the media in a flame war on Twitter:

“I want them [the mainstream media] have to do a little bit of work on a tour like this,” Palin told CNN. This morning, she fooled some of them, leaving her bus behind as a decoy. Reporters have resorted to chasing her bus. All of this confusion seems to have gotten to the press who, understandably, are trying to get the story and do their jobs.

Now, some of the media frustration is playing out on Twitter.

Some journalists believe Palin is behaving like a celebrity, and that covering her may be beneath them.

Liberal scribes from three left wing publications — Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic and Politico’s Ben Smith, with The Washington Post’s token “conservative” Jennifer Rubin predictably crossing the aisle to side with them against Sarah Palin — seem to have taken that position, but CNN’s Peter Hamby, to his credit, is calling them on it.

Dave Burge, of Iowahawk fame, has a knack for boiling things down to one often deliciously sarcastic sentence, as he demonstrated by tweeting:

“What did you think, MSM? you could accuse Palin of mass murder, weaponize her kids against her & then get a ride on the bus?”

It is nothing short of hilarious watching some of the same DNC stenographers journalists who have thrashed Gov. Palin and her family for the better part of three years now making complete fools out of themselves. None more so than NY Times political blogger Michael Shear, who has his undies all tied up in knots.

Did she set them up? As the Grateful Dead used to sing, “like a bowling pin.”

– by Josh Painter
*
Memo to the punditocracy: You’ve got it all wrong. Sarah Palin aims to run for president in this election cycle. You don’t even have to read between the lines of the transcript of last night’s ‘Hannity” program to find all of the clues left by the first woman to win the vice presidential nomination in the history of the Republican Party:

Assessing the field of candidates, Gov. Palin said she was “looking for others who are ready to go rogue and fight against the machine on both sides of the aisle in order to get the economy back on the right track…” She said she intends to “make sure that we have a candidate out there with Tea Party principles, understanding that we are taxed enough already.”

If you still have any doubts that Sarah Palin considers herself one of the players on the field of presidential dreams, consider her words that “every one of us — not just potential candidates, everyone of us as human beings — we bring strengths and weaknesses to the table,” and “there is still a lot of work to be done on each one of our parts to finally see that line-up solidified.”

Still a doubting Thomas? The warrior princess from the Arctic lands dropped enough additional hints than you don’t need to hire a Native Yup’ik Eskimo (such as Todd Palin) to guide you to them:

“Sean, we need to look at every one of this potential candidates and declared candidates records. See if they’ve had opportunity to veto overspending in their city or their state and some governing body. See if they’ve seized the opportunity to save other people’s money and not squander it. See if they’ve had opportunity to go to the mat in protecting second amendment rights and every constitutional rights. See if they have in their own personal lives lived a physically and socially conservative life and really walked the walk not just talk the talk, if that is really important to you as the one doing the assessing of these candidates.”

It’s not difficult to see that Sarah Palin has defined the kind of presidential candidate she’s looking for in 2012 as… Sarah Palin. We don’t think any others, especially those with Tiffany’s bills substantial enough to support several Bristol Bay native villages for the duration of a long, hard winter, will measure up to her high standards. Those who dwell in many earthly mansions won’t cut it either. No, Gov. Palin is the mama grizzly who, when she wants a job done, will do it herself.